A Bit of Background

I was doing a bit of reading on Australia and thought I'd share some of the interesting facts I found on Wikipedia:

• Australia is both the world's smallest continent and the largest island
• Its population is just 21.7 million and 80% of the people live along the coast
• Its landmass is 2.97 million square miles, making it the 6th largest country in the world but also among the least populated (232 out of 238). Only Greenland, Falkland Islands, Western Sahara, Mongolia, French Guiana, and Namibia are less densely populated.
  
• By comparison, the US has 302 million people and 9.6 million square miles of land, ranking at 177 in population density.
• Singapore is the second most densely populated country with 4.8 million people living in just 274 square miles (about half the size of Houston's city limits)
  
• Australia has six states and two territories.
• Perth is the capitol of the state of Western Australia, which has a landmass of 965,000 square miles. Texas is only 268,000 square miles.
• The entire population of WA (Western Australia) is 2.16 million and 75% of the people live in Perth and its surrounding communities.
  
• Texas has 24.6 million residents (more than the entire country of Australia) and 5.7 million in Houston metro alone (more than the entire state of WA).

That explains why I went back in time about 10 years Saturday when I signed up for my mobile phone here. The sales guy explained the advantages of each different phone based on what kind of signal it received outside the city. It's extremely expensive compared to the US or Singapore and includes almost nothing! Charges per call, per minute, per SMS and no rollover, no deals. It felt like the first time I got a cell phone in college and had to pay so much for a small number of minutes, then keep track of what I used each month. Now I understand a bit better because the area of network coverage in Australia is enormous and there just aren't that many people using it. It is a very interesting change coming from such a crowded place to the true country.

(And yes, fellow Texans, it pained me to talk about how much bigger some other state is than my beloved home...I won't bring it up again!)